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Mike the Author

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Considerations on Church-Renewing Movements 1

There are
lots of programs, systems, paradigms and “movements” surging through the
American Church scene that are promoting themselves as ways to revitalize your
church, making it more “missional” and faithful to Jesus and Jesus’ cause. For
those who have a rich love for Jesus’ Church, and desire be part of the Word of
God increasing and multiplying (Acts 12.24), then this kind of talk will rouse their
hearts and draw their attention.

Because this
subject resonates with me, I would like to take several weeks to think through
some issues related to it. The way I plan to address these concerns, hopes and
anticipations is by ruminating over six considerations brought up by William J.Abraham in the first chapter of his book, “The Logic of Renewal” (p.3-6).
Though I read this book in 2004, I have found his observations perceptive, and
an indispensable aid to discernment in this area throughout the past several
years.

To begin with
Abraham points out what I think is a serious blind spot for those embracing renewal
models, and ought to be kept in the forefront of a church-planter’s or pastor’s
mind:

“1. Proposals
in renewal will be inescapably theological in content. They will presuppose
some sort of ecclesial picture of what the church is supposed to be and to do.
It is all too easy to forget this, not least because Christians in the West are
woefully weak in their thinking about ecclesiology. Either they refuse to think
about it at all, or they simply accept uncritically the conception of the
church that they have inherited. Yet ecclesiological considerations are crucial
in any deep conception of ecclesial renewal. Our conceptions of renewal depend
in part on some governing model of what the life and work of the church should
be. We operate with some picture of how things really ought to be in the church
at large” (3).

As Abraham brings
out here, renewal-missional-reviving movements assume a specific
ecclesiological model. I would go further and say that they also flow from a
specific sacramental preconception, for ecclesiology and sacramentology go hand
in glove. The value of Abraham’s observation is that when looking into any
renewal agenda, the leadership must persistently ask, “What ecclesial picture
is being assumed here, and thus being advocated (whether intentionally/unintentionally)?”

As an
example, when certain emergent church figures started coming into the spotlight
with their various books, I picked up several to read. It wasn’t long into any
one of them that I began to notice a trend toward something like a
restorationist ecclesiology. Restorationism finds its most pronounced adherents among the Anabaptists
and their grandchildren (for example, the Campbellite movement that splintered
off into the Church of Christ/Disciples of Christ/Christian Church camps). Interestingly
enough, one of the more vocal emergent talking heads is a self-proclaimed
Anabaptist, happily quoting other Anabaptists, like Yoder and Hauerwas.

The central
idea of Restorationism is to restore the first century church because
everything went to pot from the 2nd century onward. Some place the
shift at the “conversion” of Constantine, but the point is the same: there’s
the pristine church and then, ka-pow, the gone-to-pot church. Therefore, the
church was royally screwed up for 1500 years (or 1700, or 1900-plus, or...) until
we (our particular group) put it back on the right track with our plan or
program. And if you don’t buy into our unspoiled
model, you’re part of the apostasy, or you're part of the dysfunctional, compromised
Church structure.

An attendant
concept that Restorationism has is an individualist ecclesiology that is normally
coupled with a memorialist sacramentology. Each congregation is a law unto
itself (the root meaning of autonomous)
and therefore not subject to any governing authority outside itself. With this
congregational autonomy comes a belief of immediate divine authority; whether
it’s by the Spirit at work revealing Himself to the leadership or congregation directly,
or by way of the leadership’s/congregation’s own historically unplugged notions
of what the Bible says, etc. Similarly, the sacraments are vacant of any awareness of
the real participation or real presence of Christ, or that the sacraments are
truly means of grace. The sacraments are seen more as tools that we can take or
leave as we see fit; to use or misuse, keep as they were instituted or modify, however it is most meaningful to us.

This
individualist ecclesiology (with its accompanying sacramentology) became
clearer to me with each passing tide of new books and new speaking engagements by the authors.
What Abraham stated above appears to be correct, that church renewal is inescapably
theological in content, and unavoidably ecclesiological.* That recognition
ought to cause us to start asking strong questions of any renewal model
marketed to us. The primary question must be, “What ecclesial paradigm is
assumed and advocated by this program?” And a second question following close
by should be, “What is the sacramental supposition of the proponents of this
model?”

This leads
me to some reflective questions for the reader.

·If
Presbyterians, Anglicans and Lutherans, with their professedly meaty
ecclesiology and sacramentology, imbibe in a renewing-resurging paradigm that
is Restorationist (specifically, Baptistic and Zwinglian) in its undercurrent,
what will the result be?

·Will
this renewal plan create cognitive dissonance in their parishioners (“Why do we
act like Baptists, but sprinkle babies?”)?

·Will
we be turning our churches into parachurch organizations or Tupperware parties
with a cross, instead of an intentionally Christian Church that is unashamedly
Trinitarian and is nurtured in Word and Sacrament, with Prayer?

·By
following this or that model will we be segregating our fellowship across
ethnic/economic/political/chronological lines? In other words, does this
particular program market to specific age groups, economic groups, racial
groups etc, and exclude others who are followers of Christ (see my post on that here)?

3 comments:

It is interesting that protestants usually have spoken of constant or continual reformation and those who see the church as a continuous gathering speak of renewal.I will get the book and read it before I comment further. Peace to you

The music is part of it. In being "missional", with a bunch of "praise songs" that are about us, and only tangentially about Jesus and His atonement for our sins, the heart of Lutheranism (or of any other Reformation tradition except the Anabaptists) is discarded. Now--once you've accustomed your people to that, if they, as so many people do these days, move to another town, will they look for the local Lutheran church? Or will they look for the nearest "community" megachurch?